Search results

This paper's purpose is to identify and accentuate the dilemma faced by small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) who use mobile devices as part of their mobility business strategy. While large enterprises have the resources to implement emerging security recommendations for mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, SMEs often lack the IT resources and capabilities needed. The SME mobile device business dilemma is to invest in more expensive maximum security technologies, invest in less expensive minimum security technologies with increased risk, or postpone the business mobility strategy in order to protect enterprise and customer data and information. This paper investigates mobile device security and the implications of security recommendations for SMEs.

This conceptual paper reviews mobile device security research, identifies increased security risks, and recommends security practices for SMEs.

This paper identifies emerging mobile device security risks and provides a set of minimum mobile device security recommendations practical for SMEs. However, SMEs would still have increased security risks versus large enterprises who can implement maximum mobile device security recommendations. SMEs are faced with a dilemma: embrace the mobility business strategy and adopt and invest in the necessary security technology, implement minimum precautions with increased risk, or give up their mobility business strategy.

This paper develops a practical list of minimum mobile device security recommendations for SMEs. It also increases the awareness of potential security risks for SMEs from mobile devices.

This paper expands previous research investigating SME adoption of computers, broadband internet-based services, and Wi-Fi by adding mobile devices. It describes the SME competitive advantages from adopting mobile devices for enterprise business mobility, while accentuating the increased business risks and implications for SMEs.

This research provides accounting-ethics authors and administrators with a benchmark for accounting-ethics research. While Bernardi and Bean (2010) considered publications in business-ethics and accounting’s top-40 journals this study considers research in eight accounting-ethics and public-interest journals, as well as, 34 business-ethics journals. We analyzed the contents of our 42 journals for the 25-year period between 1991 through 2015. This research documents the continued growth (Bernardi & Bean, 2007) of accounting-ethics research in both accounting-ethics and business-ethics journals. We provide data on the top-10 ethics authors in each doctoral year group, the top-50 ethics authors over the most recent 10, 20, and 25 years, and a distribution among ethics scholars for these periods. For the 25-year timeframe, our data indicate that only 665 (274) of the 5,125 accounting PhDs/DBAs (13.0% and 5.4% respectively) in Canada and the United States had authored or co-authored one (more than one) ethics article.

Stress and the military go hand-in-hand, particularly in combat environments. While some personality traits or types weaken relationships between stress and performance, others, such as psychopathy, may strengthen them. In the present chapter, we consider the ramifications of individuals with high levels of psychopathy or psychopathic tendencies in the military with regard to both their own stress and performance and that of those around them. We discuss different reactions to psychological and physical stress, as well as the implications of psychopathic tendencies as they relate to current military issues, including gender, leadership, teamwork, turnover, post-traumatic stress disorder, and suicide. By juxtaposing relevant research findings on stress and psychopathy, we conclude that psychopathic tendencies should have neither uniformly negative nor positive effects on stress and performance in the military. Rather, effects on such individuals and the peripheral others with whom they interact will likely vary greatly depending on numerous factors.

There is widespread concern about the fact that small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) seem to be particularly vulnerable to cyberattacks. This is perhaps because smaller businesses lack sufficient situational awareness to make informed decisions in this space, or because they lack the resources to implement security controls and precautions.

In this paper, Endsley’s theory of situation awareness was extended to propose a model of SMEs’ cyber situational awareness, and the extent to which this awareness triggers the implementation of cyber security measures. Empirical data were collected through an online survey of 361 UK-based SMEs; subsequently, the authors used partial least squares modeling to validate the model.

The results show that heightened situational awareness, as well as resource availability, significantly affects SMEs’ implementation of cyber precautions and controls.

While resource limitations are undoubtedly a problem for SMEs, their lack of cyber situational awareness seems to be the area requiring most attention.

The findings of this study are reported and recommendations were made that can help to improve situational awareness, which will have the effect of encouraging the implementation of cyber security measures.

This is the first study to apply the situational awareness theory to understand why SMEs do not implement cyber security best practice measures.

This qualitative paper is about social reporting in response to an incident that involved the loss of human life. It examines Loblaw’s disclosures following the Rana Plaza building collapse that killed over 1,100 Bangladeshi workers.

This article draws on Suchman’s (1995) comprehensive legitimacy typology to interpret Loblaw’s disclosures about the collapse in both mass media coverage of the tragedy and the company’s quarterly, annual and corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports.

Loblaw worked on many fronts to secure stakeholders’ support in the aftermath of the fatal incident. Through their social disclosures, Loblaw simultaneously managed exchange, dispositional, consequential, procedural, structural, personal and cognitive legitimacy, striving to demonstrate that, notwithstanding the incident, the company was still conforming to its social contract.

This research operationalizes all aspects of Suchman’s legitimacy typology in the context of social reporting. In particular, the paper further develops the concept of cognitive legitimacy. This should be of benefit to other CSR researchers.

The loss of human life during business operations is one of the most terrible events an organization can face. Corporate activities leading to loss of human life are obviously far from being socially acceptable. Stakeholders are likely to disapprove such activities and reconsider their support, which can threaten the survival of the organization. It is thus of utmost importance to understand the strategies used by corporate managers in their attempt to secure ongoing stakeholder support.

This paper innovates by focusing specifically on social disclosures about a negative event. In so doing, it also contributes to a small, but important, literature within CSR research that examines incidents resulting in the loss of human life. The paper adapts and applies Suchman’s legitimacy framework to interpret social reporting in response to a specific instance of loss of life, the Rana Plaza building collapse. Finally, this paper mobilizes the notion of cognitive dissonance to further develop Suchman’s notion of cognitive legitimacy.

This study aims to examine the impact of soft law and institutional signalling on voluntary reporting of environmentally sensitive companies in Thailand.

Environmental disclosures in annual reports and sustainability reports of 108 listed companies for the years 2010–2014 were analysed using a checklist of un-weighted scores combined with panel data modelling.

The results show increasing trends of voluntary reporting dominated by disclosures on emissions data. Thai sustainability reporting guidelines released in 2012 were found to have a significant effect on the amount of disclosures of companies in the agriculture and food sector only. Results show that the age of the company and media attention have a significant positive relationship with environmental disclosures. Profitability is found to have a negative relationship with the level of environmental disclosures.

This study adds to existing environmental reporting literature from the perspective of soft law and institutional signalling and their impact on environmental reporting in the context of an economically developing, environmentally sensitive and in a Buddhist cultural setting country, Thailand.

This paper looks at Thai environmental disclosures from the perspective of soft law and institutional signalling, which is an original and unique contribution to CSR literature, considered through the lens of institutional legitimacy.

Within the past few years, a new phenomenon has taken place among the world's leading microfinance institutions (MFIs) – entry into new capital markets through initial public offerings (IPOs). “Going public” launches MFIs into a new frontier, not only presenting challenges but also providing new opportunities for the institutions and the clients they serve.

Trust has been widely recognized as the crucial factor of consumer purchase intention when shopping on peer-to-peer short-term rental platforms where hosts and renters are strangers. However, the specific attributes of hosts that help build trust with potential renters and drive their purchase of short-term rentals remain unknown. This study aims to explore the effects of host attributes on renter purchases made on Xiaozhu.com, one of the top short-term rental platforms in China, while controlling for short-term rental characteristics.

A crawler program was developed by Python to collect the host attributes and their short-term rental characteristics of 935 hosts in Beijing from November 18, 2015 to February 14, 2016. The authors use Poisson regression models to estimate the effects of host attributes on renter reservations. They also conduct a series of robustness checks for the estimated results.

The authors found that host attributes such as the time of reservation confirmation, the acceptance rate of renter reservations, the number of listings owned, whether a personal profile page is disclosed and gender of the host significantly affect renter reservations, whereas the response rate of the host does not influence renters when purchasing short-term rentals online.

This study identifies which host attributes are perceived as trustworthy and affect renters’ purchase decisions, a topic of both theoretical and practical importance but currently less researched. The findings add to emerging literature by providing insights on trust-building in the peer-to-peer economy. Useful suggestions are also provided on strengthening the trust mechanism on short-term rental platforms to facilitate peer-to-peer transactions. Notably, the study is the first attempt to examine the perception of Chinese users toward short-term rentals despite its global prevalence. The analytical insights revealed from large scale but granular online observations data of host attributes and actual renter reservations greatly supplement findings of extant literature using survey and experiment approaches.